Question of the Day: Could You Shoot This Target From 1 Mile Away?

The above Target is a moving target – which isn’t moving (unless you’re reading this at sea). It stands 16″ tall from the exposed bottom to the tip. The round bit at the top has a six inch diameter. TIM owner Brent Kochuba tells TTAG that he doesn’t [yet] know the exact speed at which the $365 target oscillates. [Click here for their videos.] That said, the company’s press release claims the extended wireless capability TIM target works out to one mile (1609.34m). That would be one hell of a shot. Has the 33-year-old computer engineer attempted it? “No sir. I live in the Northeast . . . We’ve only shot it out to a couple of hundred yards.” Doable at one mile out? What gun and optic would you use? TIM’s sending TTAG two targets to test. I know a place in New Mexico where we can set it up one mile out. So you’re invited! Ping thetruthaboutguns@gmail.com with a pic of your gun (for Facebook). I’ll see about getting Kirsten there as well. Again, if you can’t get here in real life, how would you make this shot?

.338 Lapua would be better then a fifty only if were talkn strictly for distance and plinkining. Its been proven to reach out and touch things at almost 2 miles. But the fiftys nice if you wanna put weight and power into that mile long shot, say if you game hunting.

6″ at 1 mile, even if it were a static target I would believe only if I saw it in person. As that target is 1/3 MOA at that distance, hitting a 1/3 MOA sized target is a feat to do at 600 yards, let alone at 1 mile.

Add movement, yeah it is unlikely that anyone could do it consistently.

At that range the fact that it is moving might actually increase the odds of a hit as it might inadvertantly move into the path of the bullet.

Also I assumed the one mile range is under ideal lab conditions, field conditions such as geography, and brush cover are highly variable and decrease range significantly so the 1 mile range makes it a whole lot more likely that it will work at the ranges you intend to use it at.

1/3 MOA? I would have thought it was a hair more than that, but I’ve seen plenty of rifles that can manage that level of accuracy. I’d imagine that with the right equipment and enough experience at it, someone could hit a 6″ target at a mile somewhat consistently. As for the question of movement, that’s a matter of timing it right, and if you can dope the wind, the curvature of the earth, the propellant temperature and burn rates and the air density and everything else to make a one mile shot, a little metronome motion would be well within your grasp. Now, if it moves erratically, on the other hand, it might be more a question of luck.

Yes there are some rifles that shoot well under 1/3 MOA, but pushing that type of accuracy out to 1,760 yards is very hard. The current F-class record is about 3″ at 1,000 yards or 1/3 MOA, so yes someone MIGHT be able to do it. But that level of shooter and gun are very very rare.

Is there a limit on number of rounds?
Eventually you’ll hit it, but nobody is hitting a six inch moving target at a mile even one time in ten.
Often you can’t even see where the round lands at that distance. You’ll need some place with no brush, and soft ground that will kick up, and be above 10,000 feet, have it be warm, with no wind.
Still, it’s extreme luck to score a hit.

Ya beat me. I was gonna mention that a very recent post reminded us of the existence of 16″ guns….

I seem to recall that they threw a 500 lb projectile 50 miles, or a 2000 lb projectile 20 miles. One shot should be easy, obliterating everything within several hundred yards of the target. Use a 4x Weaver scope.

A buddy of mine who was an old ANGLICO guy used to say a 16″ fire requests were basically an entire grid square. The projectiles were very accurate for dumb rounds, but the blast effects were simply devastating. The Marines lamented that the era of Naval gunfire support ended when the BBs were retired for good.

Well the CIRCLE may be 1/3 MOA, but the entire target itself is about 1MOA equivalent vertically. But only about 4 inches wide. So it would still have to be extreme luck.

Speaking of extreme luck…my dad claimed to have hit a bleach jug with his dad’s Zehner custom vz. 24 in .270 Winchester at half a mile. First time. With open sights. At age 12 or so (that would have been 1959).

All I can think of is it must have been one hell of a big bleach jug (barrel maybe?) or he somehow aimed low and skipped the bullet into the target. Just how big could you get a bleach jug back then?

I have the rifle, so maybe I ought to consider trekking to New Mexico? 🙂

Jesus, 1 mile! 98 Bravo- 338 Lapua, hand loaded, premium projectile, supplied rear mono-pod and sandbag rests all around. Maybe Schmidt and Bender PMII with NASA level zoom. I can consistently hit a silouette at 1000 with an M-107 but conditions have to be perfect or I won’t even try. A mile…MOVING!

Yes. I can hit that. But I will need some help. First I need a guy to crawl forward about 1,000 yards and shine a laser designator on that. Then I need a cell phone to call a Predator to drop a Hellfire on it.

Well, I’ll take a poke at it with a Savage 110 BA .338 Lapua with a Bushnell 3.5-21x scope on a 20 MOA base with 300 grain BTHP’s. I’ve never shot out that far, and giving it a college try would be fun.

I’d use some of my hand loaded Barnes 750 grain bore riders out of my McMillan. Scope is a Millet 6-25 x 56.
Might hurt the target though. It’s still hitting with a bit over 8,000 ft/lbs.
Even with a 500 yard zero, I’d be holding 22 MOA or 466 inches over.
Doable. Just because the target is oscillating doesn’t mean I can’t get lucky.
Besides, luck is when skill meets opportunity…

Tom, 8,000 ft lbs. of energy at one mile! I’d hate to think what that’s doing to your shoulder at zero yards.
Oh, by the way, if your not going to the shoot in Austin, don’t worry, I ordered extra Pizza.

I think the way to hit it would be, first, Count the seconds it takes your bullet to get to the target. Hopefully there would be something around the target area that would kick up some dust from the bullet strike. Then calculate where the target would have to be for it to be at the end of the swing, left or right.
However all this is mute if you don’t have a rifle that will shoot .3 MOA or better, Much better!
Of course it will take a while to get the bullet drop figured.

Not really moving by my definition… it’ll be oscillating which is predictable. Moving would be like on wheels. Hitting anything at a mile is impressive to me though! I’d love a mythbusters style video where they got an RC’d car rigged up and had a “sniper” go for the “kill” at a dummy driver. Do it up like the “Shooter” movie down a known path and distances. That’d be a video to watch!

I couldnt make that shot, but the 19 year old 300+ lb guy at my local gun store that was a black ops elite super special forces operator sniper in desert storm could hit it all day with his Glock .40. He also has an odd obsession with Geckos.

If I could hit it would greatly depend upon what I am shooting at it with. With a 30-06 (and similar rifle round) or even a .50 caliber rifle round I’d be lucky to hit it at 100 yards. With a computer assisted 5 inch naval gun, I pretty sure I could nail it.

Minimum caliber to do this would probably be .338 LM, and probably with a milled solid. Something with a crazy C.D. like a Lehigh. (Too bad Lost River Ballistics went out of business in ’05!) I would personally recommend, as others have, a .375 CheyTac (~3,200 FPS) or a .416 Barrett (~3,350 FPS); something with very high velocity that retains speed well at range.

Then I’d figure out the average swing time of the target and how fast the bullet can get there, then set about getting the two to meet in the middle by timing it. It’s not altogether undoable, at least when we’re talking strictly about the mathematics. But making a first-round hit on a swinging 6″ target at a mile? Video or shut the hell up.

Hopefully one of the Vietnam era guys can chime in here…I had a book about Vietnam as a kid that had a pic of a Ma Duece with a scope on it at a hilltop outpost. The story that went along with it was that they would squeeze off single shots and making kill shots at 3/4 to 1 mile away. The book is long gone, and i have no way of verifying or confirming.

Well…my favorite tool in the shed is my Barrett .50 cal. bolt action..but even then it’s a mighty sword for a still shot into 6″ …one bobbling back and forth like an armored metronome…well that’s tricky even for an ex army ‘heavy breather’. I’ve taken some pretty nifty dead-eye shots at fairly slow moving deer at about a kilometer with success, but again, they didn’t start bobbling ’til my HP hand loaded 7mm mag round repurposed their heart and lung tissue into the special of the day at camp that night.
I think I’d try my 7mm mag using my hand loads on this one. After 28 years with ‘her’ everything is slick and smooth and feels right. I’d probably cheat a bit with my homemade mini ‘ground conditions’ meter for very accurate wind, temp and humidity. ..maybe chant “wax on, wax off” for luck?